Bullies Often, The Cruel Bullies Of Childhood Years Become Violent Social Misfits As Adults

He was your worst nightmare. Bigger, stronger and walking right toward you. The most calculating kid in school. If you bumped him, even accidentally, you were dead. If you surrendered, he’d be back. If you resisted, you’d be pulverized. And if you ran, you might make it home in one piece. Only to face him tomorrow.

Then, you grew up. Whatever became of the bully?

Research indicates he’s the gangbanger on the street corner. She’s the mother who slaps her baby for crying - girls bully, too. He’s the office tyrant, the mean drunk, the convicted criminal. He’s the one adults once had the responsibility - and power - to stop, but never did.

Bullying is the undisputed red flag of childhood, the first and surest predictor of trouble ahead. Repeatedly using aggression to intimidate another who cannot defend himself is not kid’s play. It’s a pattern of behavior that researchers say persists with devastating consequences.

“I see bullying as a lifelong problem,” says psychologist Debra Pepler, a researcher at York University in Toronto. “We’ve already seen where it’s a factor in date violence and gang behavior. But wherever there’s a power differential there’s bullying: in wife assault, child abuse, in bullying in the workplace. Even elder abuse is a form of bullying.”

Most of us believe we left the bully in the schoolyard.

But he moved on.

How to make a bully

No bully starts out that way.

By age 2, children begin learning that aggression doesn’t work and how to use language instead. They learn aggression hurts others. But not in all families.

Some parents believe aggression is normal for boys and encourage it. Others, described in September’s Psychology Today, are marginally skilled parents who end up rewarding defiance through the inconsistent use of ineffective punishment.

Simply put, they don’t set clear limits. Up against an active or willful child, they scold and threaten, but don’t follow through. This continues until their patience snaps and they lash out unpredictably, acting not on what the child has done but on how they are feeling. In his book “Emotional Intelligence,” Daniel Goldman says such parenting creates “feelings of worthlessness and helplessness, and a sense that threats are everywhere and can strike at anytime.”

Still other parents fail to mentor or monitor their children, says Dr. Jim Farrow, director of the Division of Adolescent Medicine at the University of Washington. Instead of modeling appropriate behavior, they’re arguing or drinking. Instead of knowing their children and friends, they’re either not home or not paying attention. Permissiveness and passive neglect can occur in successful twocareer households as in single-parent or poor homes.

But the results show up early and with alarm bells.

“By the time a youngster is 8, these ways of behaving have been largely set down,” says psychologist Leonard Eron of the University of Michigan. “They learn it very early, and very, very well.”

By second grade, kids inclined to bully know it works: They feel stronger making someone feel weaker, they get attention, and they get what they want.

“It works in the short term; you get the kid’s jacket,” says Dr. Michael Manz, director of the psychiatric center for children and adolescents at Sacred Heart Medical Center. “And it works because there haven’t been enough disincentives to stop.”

Without intervention, bullies and victims will remain in those roles through grade school, researchers say.

Girls bully by ostracism, spreading rumors and intimidation. Boys typically bully by punching or shoving. Name calling, often with racist or sexist overtones, is common for both.

In long-term studies in Scandinavia, Dan Olweus found bullies were also aggressive toward teachers, parents and siblings. They did not have lower self-esteem or more anxiety than other kids - just markedly little empathy.

“In the bully’s belief system, victims deserve what they get,” Dr. Carla Garrity wrote recently in the journal Contemporary Pediatrics.

While bullies may not care how much they hurt their victims, they cannot guess how much they hurt themselves. After tracking 870 New York third-graders for nearly three decades, “what we found should concern every parent of highly aggressive boys who pick on smaller or younger kids,” says researcher Eron.

“This is not just boys being boys. There are serious consequences for the bully as well as for the victim.”

By middle school, most children begin to move beyond the bully, who has one way of achieving what he wants and solving problems. Socially inadequate, the bully begins to drift toward others like him.

“I see gangs as nothing more than a group of bullies,” says Farrow. “They gain status among other kids that view that as a strength.”

By their late teens, the children identified by their peers as bullies at age 8 had fallen behind economically, Eron says. By their 30s, they had higher rates of alcoholism, mental illness and criminal convictions.

They abused their wives. They parented far more aggressive children themselves. One bully in the study actually murdered another.

Fully 60 percent of middle-school bullies Olweus studied were convicted of a crime by age 24.

Of course, not all bullies wind up in prison. Some become managers.

Psychology Today reported office bullies often enjoy short-term success. But eventually, abusing employees verbally and micromanaging and demeaning people drives the bully out of the workplace as well.

But everywhere he goes, he leaves victims.

The victims

Dorothy Carter was sitting under a tree at recess reading when a group of bullies formed a circle around her and began throwing rocks.

“I put my head in my lap to protect my eyes and waited for recess to end,” remembers Carter. “I wouldn’t get up and run from them and give them that satisfaction.”

Few things in life are lonelier or more frightening for a child than being bullied. That’s why people remember it for 50 years.

Carter was singled out for being overweight. Being younger, smaller, underweight, too tall, too short or disabled can also put a child in a bully’s sights. More often than not, though, it’s personality.

Researchers say victims are typically more anxious than other children, often cautious, sensitive, quiet and shy.

If male, they are physically weaker. This does not mean they did anything to deserve bullying, only that they are even more powerless to stop it.

In the first few weeks of school each year, the sizing up begins, and nearly one in five children is singled out in what one researcher called the “shopping process.” By the end of the year, 8 percent of those kids are repeatedly the target, reports Psychology Today.

If they cry or readily give the bully what they want, they may reinforce the behavior. As repeated episodes establish their reputation as a victim, they may feel lonely and abandoned at school. They get stomachaches and headaches. They hate school.

Yet many parents tell kids they must learn to fight their own battles, which Pepler says they will never win.

“By definition, victims can’t solve the problem; they lack the power,” she says. “We need to come in and shift the balance in the bully-victim relationship.

“As adults we need to take the power away from the bully and give him a clear message.”

Carter remembers being “hysterical” with despair before she quit school because of being bullied. She got a job and became fiercely self-reliant. Others aren’t nearly so resilient.

“Guess I never said much to anyone,” wrote one Spokane woman. “Just one of the problems resulting from being bullied and humiliated as a child, becoming quiet and avoiding people. To this day, I’m a loner and prefer it. Heaven knows why my husband, a very outgoing person, ever looked at me twice.”

Children often suffer in silence because they’re afraid the retaliation will be overwhelming if they tell. Others believe even if school officials know, they don’t care, says Pepler.

Schools remain the site of most incidents - in the hallways, lunchrooms and in what one physician calls the “quasi-controlled chaos” of the playground.

Garrity, writing in Contemporary Pediatrics, reported many teachers find it hard to distinguish between teasing and roughhousing and bullying.

In her intervention, Pepler strives to change the awareness of staff and the behavior of the bullying audience. Other kids, sensing a bully about to unleash, will gather around and “literally jump off their feet” with excitement as the harassment unfolds, she says.

She teaches them ways to dissuade, distract and combat the episode as a group.

Victims who no one defended will never forget it.

“We had gum stuck in our hair, our hair yanked out, were spat upon, our clothes torn and always had bloody noses,” wrote a woman who was viciously bullied as a child in Montana. While her mother tried to protect her, her prominent father refused to talk to the parents, feeling it was just kid stuff.

“I felt my joy and innocence of being a child … destroyed. My feelings of respect for my father were gone. … He never tried to stop the harassment.”

Anymore, parents who tell victims to fight back are not only unrealistic, they’re being dangerous.

“The world has changed,” says Pepler. “Maybe when we were kids, when guns and knives weren’t present, fighting back would have been a less-risky strategy. But nowadays it is very different.”

In the past two years, from Pennsylvania to Butte, Mont., kids who were harassed by their peers reacted by shooting them.

In Moses Lake, accused teen Barry Loukatis denied he was a victim of bullies. But several witnesses recounted that Loukatis was called Barry Fairy and Faggot in the months before he walked into the classroom and shot the boy who called him that.

“If I were a youngster today without good strong family support, I’d feel totally under siege,” says Catherine Trembley, mental health coordinator for the New Bridge School for youth on parole. “The reason you see weapons in schools is because kids feel the need for protection.”

Schools have responded to aggression and bullying with programs on peer mediation, conflict resolution and respect, often with significant results.

But experts remain dismayed by the number of children who use violence and aggression to solve problems, who have little respect or fear of authority or the consequences of crossing it. They are dismayed by the number of adults who cannot say no. It is frankly easier to spend money than to spend time on children. It is easier to wait for the V-chip than to turn off the TV.

For adults who are not parents and teachers, it is easier to ignore distasteful behavior because it is not your problem.

But the secret to ending bullying seems to lie not in waiting for kids to stop acting like kids but for adults to start acting like adults.

Modeling decency, teaching empathy, requiring respect, instilling a work ethic, limiting children’s freedom and monitoring and guiding them will do more than any program at school to end bullying.

“It’s all got to start at home,” says Manz.

“If we portray to a child a world of violence, fear, sexual exploitation, disloyalty, material and sexual hedonism and devaluation of personal commitments, the value of an individual’s life is likely to be minimized,” says Dr. Brian Gipstein of Spokane. “If one becomes angry or frustrated and has easy access to lethal weaponry, the results are too predictable.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Staff illustration by Charles Waltmire

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: SCHOOLS CAN HELP STOP BULLYING What can schools do? Don’t assume the bully is being abused at home. Even children in kind, compassionate families go awry. Accurately assess the scope of the problem. Communicate clear behavior standards and consistently enforce them. Monitor playground activity closely with a supervising adult visible at all times. Teach proper conflict resolutions. Healthy kids know how to bargain, negotiate and use humor. Watch for victim symptoms such as withdrawal or a decline in study habits or grades. Provide better support for kids. Don’t just send them back out onto the playground. Show your distaste. If adults don’t openly oppose a bully’s actions, they’re approving them. Deprive bullies of an audience. Confront them in private. Don’t forget other kids. Eighty-five percent are witnesses and not participants in bullying. They can be part of the mob, or they can be part of the solution. Julie Sullivan